


fatherland

by spira



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spira/pseuds/spira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A single question pours forth the memories of Dalmasca — their Dalmasca.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fatherland

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt given to me by a friend for Ashe, with the theme of 'love'! I might have twisted the prompt a bit, eheh.

For the past two years, Ashe was convinced that her heart had been not only locked, but slammed shut and bolted.

The girl who had once had everything, who had only desired to spend her time in her uncle’s arms, now had nothing. Nothing but the burning desire for one thing: power. It was a dark, all-consuming lust, something her companions constantly tried to remind her. She knew this, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been robbed. Her life had been hijacked.

Ashe turned the Dawn Shard over in her hand. It was almost pathetic, she thought, how much of her faith she had imbued in a mere bauble.

A knock at the door sounds. “Ashe?” A tentative voice calls out to her. Ashe, shaken from her trance, looks up to the door. “It’s unlocked. Come in.” She hears her fidgeting with the door for a moment, then she steps in, offering a chipper smile. Penelo was always smiling. Ashe could barely remember what that was like, to take joy in the tiny things. “Um, do you mind if I..?” She points to an armchair, a few feet away from the bed Ashe sat upon. “Go ahead.”

Penelo was beginning to become friendlier with Ashe, the longer time they spent together. She was more than likely intimidated to begin with, to be near a supposedly dead princess. After a while, though, she must have realized she wasn’t such a scary tyrant after all. She was just a normal girl, like she was. A normal, Dalmascan girl.

“What’s it like?” Penelo asks, after a pensive lull of silence. It takes Ashe a moment to reply. “What do you mean?” She could think of a myriad of connotations to that question. “Having power like that, I mean,” Penelo added. “Not just the Dawn Shard, but nethicite in general, and your political connections, and.. those.” She points to the Treaty Blade and the Sword of Kings, mounted in a corner of the room. “It seems like it’d be overwhelming.”

Penelo really had a way of putting things, Ashe thought. It was overwhelming to know the nethicite both she and Vayne held could destroy so much. If she used it wrong, it would cause decimation. Was she just chasing a fool’s fancy all this time?

“.. I admit it is scary. It’s a power that seems like no person has the right to hold alone.” She looks to Penelo, then back to the Dawn Shard, which she clutches tighter. “But this is the only hope that I—“ She stops herself. “That Dalmasca has.” The only remnant of her past self, held in her hands now.

Penelo nods. It was a genuine question, after all, not one that necessarily had a wrong answer. Yet Ashe couldn’t shake the feeling that Penelo asked it for a reason. “Well, I know you’ll use it for the right reasons, Ashe. Dalmasca is my home, but it’s yours, too. We all love Dalmasca.. what’s left of it. And we know you can salvage all the parts left.”

Love. Could she truly say she’d felt that feeling in these past two years? It seems like she’d been the embodiment of the antithesis. And yet, when she remembers Dalmasca, her Dalmasca, the Dalmasca her ancestors had forged from their own blood, the way it used to be, she felt nothing but a deep affection.

“I promise,” She began. “I will do everything within my power, _my own_ power, to restore Dalmasca. Our Dalmasca.” Not her Dalmasca. It belonged to them all— Penelo, Vaan, Basch, Vossler. It would be the people’s Dalmasca, the way it was intended. “I swear it.”


End file.
